


Tag

by Jarakrisafis



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 01:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/257466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jarakrisafis/pseuds/Jarakrisafis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What better way to get some recharge time than to occupy any potential pranksters with something else...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The can of paint above the security room door (and Red Alerts subsequent glitch when it had ‘violently assaulted’ him) had been the last straw. If the fraggers had so much energy he would at least channel it into something productive, which would explain why he was looking over a group of fidgeting mechs currently waiting around the rec room.

“You all understand the rules?” He asked one last time, before standing aside from the door. “The game starts in ten human minutes.”

War whoops echoed through the room as mechs scrambled out of the room, new paint schemes glistening as they took off along the corridors.

:Prowl to Red, they’re off, I’ll be up in a moment.:

Slumping into the chair beside Red Alert he surveyed the monitors, easily picking out where the various groups had chosen to set themselves up.

A group of yellow mechs (Sunstreaker had refused to change colours) had holed up in the armoury. Even with the identical paintschemes he could pick out Sideswipe, Bluestreak, Smokescreen and Trailbreaker.

A strangely blue Optimus, and hadn’t that been a surprise when he had decided to join in, was in one of the abandoned hangers with Ironhide, Tracks, Grapple and Hoist.

The minibots, all of them now a uniform rust red had slunk back into the rec room and were moving tables and chairs to create a barricade.

A pale lilac Blaster had set up in a stairwell, with his altmode being so small he and his cassettes had obviously decided not to set up a permanent base of operations.

And the last group, Prowl blinked, staring at all the monitors in turn. The now silver Jazz and Hound were nowhere to be seen. Their third member he was expecting not to see, Mirage spent half his time invisible anyway, but the other two, not so much.

:All mechs, the game has begun.: Red Alerts announcement was followed by movement on several fronts.

“So, you really think this will stop em from playing pranks?” Inferno asked as he kept an optic on the base defences.

“I highly doubt it.” Ratchet chimed in on the open link from medbay, one of the other off-limit areas of the base. “The fraggers are just going to come in here with strained muscle cables and dented armour.”

“I am hoping to work off some of the energy in a constructive manner.” Prowl said before shooting Red a sideways glance, “Unless you wish to be assaulted by a bucket of pink paint again?”

The security directors shudder answered that question easily enough as he turned back to the monitors.

“Oooooh.” Prowl felt his doors twitch at Inferno's exclamation, quickly picking out the image that had caught his attention, that of the minibots successfully defending their hideout until Optimus dashed around the corner and simply lifted up the door barricade to use as a shield and the minibots scattering behind the rest of the furniture as Ironhide started shooting at them from safely behind Optimus and his new shield.

“A pity they forgot to watch their back.” Red Alert said as the monitor showing the scoring registered hits from an unseen source on all of Prime’s group. Ironhide’s cursing of special operations clearly coming through the monitors as they withdrew to wait for their own weapons to come back online after the hits.

“You know, this actually seems like fun.” Ratchet said as he leaned against the medbay door watching Sunstreaker’s group roundly cursing the cassettes as they fired blindly into the ventilation shafts, the echoing laughter from above proving that their efforts were not being successful.

“If you’d agreed to take part everybody else would have dropped out.” Wheeljack said as he joined Ratchet in laughing at the twins’ misfortunes.

Ignoring the bantering from medbay, and Red and Inferno having a low discussion Prowl allowed himself to relax, confident that he could manage at least two hours recharge without being disturbed by some prank or other while the pranksters in question wore themselves out running around the ship playing laser tag.


	2. Tag Team

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can remove the danger from a mission, but special ops will still be the same.

Jazz had to admit, when Prowl had found a human game called laser tag and suggested it as a way to keep certain troublemakers out of trouble (Sideswipe’s name was muttered by several mechs in the command meeting) he hadn’t been to sure it would work.

And then the ‘couple of rooms’ had been expanded to ‘most of the base’ and the ‘just a few of them’ had become ‘almost everybody except those on duty’

That had been yesterday.

Today Jazz would readily admit that he was having fun. Normally this sort of activity, ‘creeping around a base with Mirage’ was reserved for missions of great importance. Thus the added bonus that slipping up wouldn’t involve capture, torture, escape or anything else including any type of pain only made it better.

A light tap on his shoulder indicated that Mirage was back, the double tap on his upper arm meant that the path was clear.

Just because this was a game didn’t mean they would take any chances.

Besides there were several cubes of energon resting on himself, Mirage and Hound getting through the three hours of game play without taking any major hits.

The elaborate tracking system Prowl and Red Alert had come up with registered any hits, both made and taken and added them to a big scoreboard up in the security room. But only what would be killing shots, either helm or spark, would disable the victim’s gun for a short while and give them a grace period where other hits wouldn’t count so they could get away. It was those kills that the highgrade was resting on.

A double tap to his helm caused him to freeze, Hound going still behind him. The faint waver of displaced air indicating Raj’s reappearance before he gave his report in a whisper. “Prime’s team is approaching the rec room, the minis have holed up in there.”

Jazz tilted his helm as he calculated attack plans. “Raj, go set yourself up in a good position to snipe from, Hound we’ll hang back. We’ll wait for them to engage and take them out in a pincer, once they’re all down, get out before the minis recover.”

Mirage nodded before disappearing from optical sensors again, not even swirling air currents marking his passing as he moved out.

Hefting his gun Jazz slid around the next corner, hugging the corridor walls as he put each foot down carefully to avoid the whine of adjusting servos, Hound had dropped to the ground, shifting his weight onto all four limbs to better distribute it so his heavier frame didn’t give them away.

Poking his helm around the last corner Jazz almost laughed as he watched minibots scatter from Primes advance, the large mech simply picking up a section of a hastily erected barricade to use as a shield as his team fired around the doorway.

Unfortunately for them they forgot the major rule of combat, always leave a rear guard, not that it would have helped, as Mirage decloaked and fired in almost one move, Prime’s ID signature showing up as offlined as the mech in question made a sound of surprise.

Mirage dropped Ironhide with a beautiful shot to the helm before the mech could register that his team leader was dead, Grapple, Hoist and Tracks following not long after.

“Good shot on ‘Hide.” Jazz said as they ducked into a storage room several corridors and a couple of levels away.

Mirage grinned, “Couldn’t really miss at that range. So where now?”

“Hush.” Hound said from the doorway as he waved an arm at them before going still, a look of concentration on his faceplates.

The clatter of metal on metal was followed by cursing before two small forms streaked past the open door. “Up, up, up.”

“That’s cheating!”

“How? Prowl didn’t say we couldn’t use the ventilation shafts.”

“True.”

“Come back here, you little slaggers.” ‘Sunstreaker’ Mirage mouthed right before the yellow mech stalked past their hiding place.

“Not a chance.” Eject’s voice seemed to come from a distance as he and Rewind laughed, mocking the bigger mechs.

“Glitches are in the vents.”

“Is that allowed?”

“It wasn’t disallowed.”

“Slag. Well we aint gonna catch up with them here, better to try and find Blaster and draw them out that way.”

The mob of optic blindingly golden-yellow mechs withdrew with much grumbling, and only when the sound of footsteps had faded did Hound relax.

“What were you projecting?”

Hound sniggered, “A blank wall.”

Mirage and Jazz smirked, their lives often depended upon observing such small details, and the sudden lack of a door would have been instantly noticed.

“We following them?” Hound asked, meaning the yellow posse, as he poked his helm out of the door, keeping a wary sensor on the ventilation shafts dotted along the corridor.

“Nah, I got a better idea.” Jazz grinned as he scaled the nearest wall, “If I know Blaster, he’ll be staying mobile and using the vents is a quick and easy way round the ship.”

“Blaster’s too big to fit.” Hound said with a frown even as Jazz disengaged one of his magnets and waved a finger at the tracker.

“His alt mode will fit easily and his cassettes can all carry him, now Eject and Rewind have thought of using the air ducts they’ll all use them.” The saboteur slid into the opening, his new silver colour scheme blending in with the metal behind him, leaving just an eerie glowing visor. “Work your way down to the basement levels, I’ll meet you there.”

Crawling around the ventilation shafts wasn’t something Jazz tended to do all that often, since some of the turns required creative partial transformations to navigate. But just in case it was necessary he did have a complete layout buried in his processor, including best sniper positions and spying spots. All of which Blasters lot probably also had mapped...

This is one of those moments where Jazz really wanted to, what did the humans call it again? Ah yes, an evil overlord laugh. Steeljaw, master sneak was crouched down in a vent overlooking the rec room, his shoulder mounted laser ready to fire. And Jazz was right behind him, weapon also ready to go.

Really, Jazz mused as he shimmied away, Steelie had no hope. What he hadn’t expected was for the quadruped to jump that high in surprise that he tumbled right out of the vent. At least he had landed on his paws before streaking out of the rec room, his enraged howl echoing back up towards Jazz.

Which would be the entire reason why he was removing himself from the crime scene as rapidly as he could, before unholy vengeance was heaped upon his shiny silver aft.

Contorting in ways that his chassis really shouldn’t bend Jazz dropped to the floor, the dull thud of metal sounding loud in the quiet corridor.

He gave a cheery wave to Ratchet, who was leaning on the doorframe of his medbay, an amused Wheeljack waved back as he poked his helm over a white shoulder, his fins flashing in amusement.

A scuttling sound above his head gave him just enough time to roll, the shot aimed for his spark catching his arm as he flipped into alt mode and sped off. Either Eject or Rewind cursing him as he went.

Slamming his breaks on he performed a textbook handbreak turn, burning rubber leaving thick black tracks on the floor.

If he judged this right, then the cassettes wouldn’t give up so easily and would come shooting round the corner, straight into his sights.

Or not.

Slag! Just his luck, why couldn’t Sideswipe and Bluestreak have stayed away for a couple more human minutes?

Time to bail. Although with the amount of cackling and taunting coming from the cassettes, Sides and Blue are probably not going to be coming round the corner till they’ve finished cursing the little glitches.

So, time to find Raj and Hound.

Jazz barely has time to process that thought, the fact that a packing crate in one of the storerooms just moved, and the silver arm which unceremoniously latches onto his collar plating before he is yanked into the room.

“Took you long enough.” The packing crate says; its two silver arms making it look like some strange Halloween costume.

“Hologram.” Jazz says with a grin, before the illusion seems to expand as Hound creates a larger packing crate to cover them both. “You get anybody?”

“Steeljaw. He ran straight into us, couple of the minis out scouting and Raj got Prime again.”

“Excellent, so, one hour down, two hours to go...”

* * *

Jazz cycled air in a sigh as he stretched; cables and gears moving with a series of grinding noises. All around him mechs sprawled across the furniture and floor of the rec room as they comparing datapads with their scores on.

“I hope you all had fun.” Prowl started, agreement rippling around the room. “Inferno thought it would be a good idea to award the best players with a commemorative plaque that you can display until we do this again,”

A second ripple of agreement went around the room as several items were removed from subspace storage and deposited onto tables; energon, polishing cloths, wax and various other odds and ends all being used in bets.

“The award for most hits landed goes to Ironhide.” Several items changed hands as a silver disc was passed across the room.

“And the award for most hits taken also goes to Ironhide.” Many of the items were returned as the second disc made its way to the bodyguard.

“I forget that arms and legs count as points and just take the hits like I do in battle.” Hide explained rather sheepishly.

“Award for greatest percentage of hits on target goes to Bluestreak.” The sniper grinned, his wings flickering in excitement as he took the plate.

“Award for hardest target goes to Mirage, who nobody managed to tag.” Several grumbles about invisibility being banned next time went around the room as the spy appeared next to Jazz, bowed with all the elegance of a refined noble, before retaking his seat.

“The award for easiest target goes to Beachcomber.” The minibot took the award with an easy grin and a considerably less refined bow.

“The award for most deaths goes to Optimus Prime.” The silver plate was handed to their leader who accepted it gravely before Prowl turned back to Jazz’s table, “This included eleven separate kills by Mirage, anything you want to tell us?”


	3. Chapter 3

Ratchet sighed, no matter what Prowl said, this could only end badly.

“Oh come on, what could they do with low powered lasers?” Wheeljack asked as he fiddled with a broken datapad.

“It’s not the lasers I’m worried about, it’s the dents and scrapes that...” he cut off abruptly as a group of mechs yelling war whoops went past the open door.

“Were they all yellow?” Wheeljack asked as he joined Ratchet at the doorway.

“Some idiot decided to have team colours and then they all did it. Wait till you see Primes team, royal blue with red flames.”

Wheeljack apparently didn’t have an answer to that as a silver mech snuck his head out of a nearby vent, carefully checking the corridor for threats. The visor flickered in a quick wink as he extracted himself from the confined space with a whirl of partial transformation. He gave them both a jaunty wave before suddenly throwing himself into a roll to avoid being tagged by Blaster’s twins who popped their heads out of the vent, grumbling as Jazz flipped into his alt mode and shot around the corner with a taunting flash of his lights.

“There they are, get ‘em.” The yellow team piled into the corridor as Eject and Rewind stopped their pursuit of Jazz and dove for the nearest vents where the larger mechs couldn’t follow.

“You know, this actually seems like fun.” Ratchet said as he watched Sunstreaker’s group cursing the two cassettes as they fired blindly into the ventilation shafts, their targets taunts echoing back out into the corridor to prove that they were being unsuccessful.

“If you’d agreed to take part everybody else would have dropped out.” Wheeljack said as Sunstreaker’s team finally decided they weren’t going to get the cassettes to come out. “And just think, you’d be able to shoot the twins as many times as you want.”

“I’m going to go do something useful and sort my inventory.” Ratchet said as he set off down the corridor, following the rubber marks from Jazz’s abrupt departure, a sly grin slowly settling on his face as he finally thought about what Wheeljack had said. “You know, I think I’m warming up to this game.”

Wheeljack just smirked as they entered the storeroom and started opening packing crates. He doubted many of the mechs knew just how accurate Ratchet could be with a rifle since using live rounds and knowing he was causing harm tended to clash with his medical programming. But a laser rifle was harmless...

“Not that one ‘Jack.”

“Why?” The engineer asked as he backed away from the large crate he had approached.

“It might bite.”

“It might bite?” Wheeljack repeated incredulously as he turned to face the medic, unsure if he had just glitched his audial receivers or not.

“Well, you never know with some crates.” Ratchet said as he looked over ‘Jacks shoulder, his faceplates twitching with suppressed laughter.

Following his gaze the engineer froze for a moment before scrambling backwards as the crate shuffled towards him.

And then giggled.

A very familiar giggle as the crate dissolved to show Hound and Jazz.

“Should’a seen your face ‘Jack.” Jazz said as Hound gave the engineer a hand up off the floor where he had tripped, before they both made for the door. Mirage phasing into view behind them as they slipped out.

“You glitch.” Jack said as he glared at his still sniggering friend. “You knew they were there.”

“Are you sure we should be out and about while they are playing?” Wheeljack asked some time later as they made their way towards the control room.

“We’re tagged as non-players, and even if they do shoot us, what’s it going to do? I’m more worried about being run over than anything else.” Ratchet had no sooner finished speaking than a blue and red flame painted semi barrelled around the corner, a similarly painted Tracks clinging to his cab as he shouted for Optimus to go faster.

Ratchet and Wheeljack flattened themselves against the wall as they swept past, Tracks firing wildly into what appeared to be the entire horde of minibots currently onboard the ship.

Wheeljack just shrugged as the screaming pack disappeared around another corner. Sometimes it really was better not to ask.

“Seen Prime?” Ratchet lifted one optical ridge at Ironhide as he stopped at an intersection, clearly searching for his missing leader. What could it hurt? Ratchet pointed down the corridor they had just come out of. Besides, at the speed Prime had been hitting he was long gone, so Prowls non-interference rule would not really be applicable.

“Thanks.” ‘Hide said as he jogged up the corridor only to start cursing at the next intersection as he was tagged. If the mutterings about ‘Slagging invisible glitches having an unfair advantage’ was anything to go by then Mirage had just made another kill.

“Well, one thing I can say, at least today hasn’t been boring.” Wheeljack said as Steeljaw wound between his legs, shoulder cannon swivelled to shoot Smokescreen and Trailbreaker. While having Wheeljack crash to the ground did hold up the two larger mechs it didn’t help in the long run as he ran into a forcefield and was forced to turn and fight.

“Definitely not boring.” Ratchet agreed as he heaved Wheeljack to his feet again as they continued their somewhat perilous journey towards the control room to watch the cameras and check the scores.


End file.
